Lost and Found

You can lose your nerve, and you can lose your heart. You can lose your point, and you can lose your way. You can lose your mind, and your place in line. Over the course of your life, you can lose it all.

When you are being asked to do what you don’t want to do, and you go ahead and do it anyway, you put yourself at risk. If you don’t have to do it, don’t. If you have to do it, find a way to do it with integrity, to your own mind, your own heart, and in your own way.

Sometimes we grind away doggedly at a task, until we abruptly set down our tool, and then when the time comes to pick it up again, it’s as if our body has forgotten how to make it happen. It hasn’t. It just won’t do it any more. Sometimes it is like that.

And we can wail and fight, and grieve the loss, or we can say to ourselves, “and what comes next?” Rarely are we actually lost. Often, we’ve sat down, or fallen down, and that is where we plant ourselves, when really, there are so many things made for each of us, that we can’t even get to all of them in one short life.

It does feel so heavy and miscalculated, though, doesn’t it? And sometimes we have to shed that heaviness before we can stand up, lighter, and roll, or skip, or stumble into the new. At least that’s how it’s felt here, for me. Each layer of life unearthed, each discovery of treasure and simultaneous acknowledgement that what’s done is done, so hard.

I love each place, each moment, and each cast of characters fully, and yet, in the end all I get to keep is myself, and the principles on which I stand. I look down, where my feet are resting, and I know I’ve worked hard to make this place mine. I know I can do it again, and again, and again. I’ve done it so many times.

My feet. My place. This moment. Always and in perpetuity. It makes things easier, really, though one may be judged for making a world so mighty, and so small.

We must learn to care about that less.

In the end, what is the purpose of judgment? Aside from making the person who bears it feel safer, and more secure in his, or her own moment, I’m sure not much.

Yet it is so powerful that we make our own judgments about ourselves, off of the faces and postures of friends and strangers. We automatically, unconsciously, and repetitively launch preemptive strikes against ourselves, our situations, and our vulnerabilities, in the most ineffective fashion of self-protection. It’s in our nature, and the more vulnerable and sensitive, the more fierce and harsh our self-inflicted wounds.

“You can’t hurt me, I say who hurts me.” I will make a shield against your efforts to take anything away from me. I will stop you in your tracks.

Or, we can take a softer stance. We can make a softer story. There is no need to put our guts our, for the birds to pick. With a laser beam of understanding, and a small pocket of grace, you can stand your ground, instead. You can stand in your place, until she who judges turns away, for she has her own work to attend to, and it has nothing to do with you.

And send her with love.

Yes, when someone has hurt you, send them with love, for here is the stark reality: What you have seen, is the dark side of the heart of another. You have seen that he is unable to turn toward his own dim halls and refill them with light. Whether it’s because he is too frightened, too mean-spirited, or too unaware, is not your business, though the allure of speculation is too strong. Needing to make sense of things pulls us there, with its own strange power.

And while she is not a victim, and she stands undeserving of pity (for no one deserves that), she is sailing dark seas, my friend.

So yes, as contrived as it sounds, roll up your guts, and wish the haters well. In doing that, you release yourself from the hold they have on you, however impossible it may seem. But don’t stop there. Continue to fight brightly, effectively, and bravely against the gravity that would pull you down, unless you choose to sit, and let it hold you as you rest.

Do not give your power to the abusers of the world. Let your strength serve as a beacon for all that are not yet free, and don’t ever put yourself beneath the feet of the unkind. Laugh in the face of your fears, and remember–your feet, your place, this moment. That is your home, and you are always welcome back.